Day 8

Sunday, April 2, 2000

OMG, this was too funny...Gwendal Peizerat just spent the last hour hanging out his hotel window throwing autographed postcards down to the crowd below, and Abitbol/Bernadis and Vanessa Gusmeroli hung out their window and did the same for a while! It was hilarious! I went outside to get some pictures and ended up catching a signed postcard of Abitbol/Bernadis. :)

Exhibitions

I had awful seats, but I won't go into that...I'm just going to list here which program these skaters did.
Vincent Restencourt was scheduled to skate but didn't; don't know why.
Sarah Hughes skated to "The Prayer".
Zagorska/Siudek used some sort of vocal classical music.
Chengjiang Li - "Riverdance".
Chait/Sakhnovsky - their free dance
Vanessa Gusmeroli - "Butterfly"
Sale/Pelletier - "Kiss" by Prince. They wore shiny vinyl pants, LOL
Evgeni Plushenko - free skate minus the 3a and 4t
Lobacheva/Averbukh - "Tutti Frutti" - how many times have they used this program now???
Maria Butyrskaya - "Carmen" - same outfit as at Europeans
Abitbol/Bernadis - "Mask of Zorro" - this program is absolutely brilliant, although I liked Sarah's red dress that she wore at Skate America better than the pink one she wore today. At the end of their program, Sarah's tiny 3-4 pound dog came running onto the ice and followed them around - very cute. :)

Stannick Jeannette - some weird, funky program - what he does best, LOL
Drobiazko/Vanagas - "Sunrise at Alcatraz"
Michael Weiss - "Super Freak" - he wore shiny gold pants and started the program in a handstand
Irina Slutskaya - some dance song
Shen/Zhao - "Crazy". They wore black vinyl pants and white shirts.
Stojko - "I Like it Like That" (or whatever it's called - he's done it a zillion times)
Fusar-Poli/Margaglio - their Arabian number; part of it is "Hava Nagila" (don't know how to spell that)
Michelle Kwan - "Hands", then an encore to part of her SP.
Petrova/Tikhonov - techno version of "Rigoletto" by G.Verdi. She seemed to be trying to "beat him up" most of the probram. Her red shorts were a little on the short side. :)
Alexei Yagudin - "Tosca", then an encore to "September Morning" by Neil Young.
Anissina/Peizerat - "Dance with me, Esmerelda". They did an encore to their original dance and yet another encore to something else.

The only falls came from Kwan, who fell on her 3lutz, and Yagudin, who tripped while skating forward (he tried to cover it up like he did at Improv Ice in December), and then, during his encore, landed his death drop on his butt. He couldn't cover that one up too well. :)

I can't believe another Worlds is over...:( Well, almost, anyway. There's a banquet tonight for the skaters, and I don't leave 'til tomorrow afternoon.

• The horrendous seating at the arena. If you were sitting in the corners, you didn't even see ice when you stared straight ahead, and if you were on the north side, you couldn't see the skaters if they were on the north 1/3 of the rink.
• The several thousand French school children who showed up for the qualifying rounds and laughed at the skaters when they fell.
• The rude French audience when they booed Shen/Zhao when their marks were higher than the French (and who also booed the Italian ice dancers until they were safely behind the French).
• Being sick with a sinus infection all week - ugh.
• The weather here. It wasn't that bad, but I'd expected it to be much warmer.
• The sometimes not-so-nice French people at the hotel who sometimes didn't even bother serving you when you asked for something.
• The frightening fall that Obertas/Palamarchuk took in the pairs' free skate.
• The unevenness of the ladies' qualifying groups.

Things I loved about this trip:

• The incredible convenience of the hotel; being able to go back to the room during resurfacings and getting back in plenty of time.
• The quickness of the results - after each event, there were always copies of the results at the hotel within 30 minutes.
• Being in the same hotel with all the skaters - most of the Russians and other Europeans were in my hotel. It was always fun to see who I'd get to ride the elevator with next, LOL!
• The exileration of being in a foreign country - I love traveling, and I'm so excited to be going to Switzerland this summer...
• Cheap, cheap flowers and cheap, wonderful food.
• Being there live to watch some pretty awesome performances!
• Meeting so many new people, and seeing some old friends again....Hi, Arlene, Sandra, Donna, Karen, Benjamin, Veronica, Sarah, Tim, Mirko, Anna, and everyone else I didn't mention. :o)

Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7
Home Email Kelly